


just another highschool quarrel

by evolsailor



Category: South Park
Genre: "We Were Hurt By Cartman" Club, Abusive Friendships, Best Friends, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Crushes, Drug Addiction, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friendship, High School, Meth Is Bad Kids, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Psychological Trauma, Secret Crush, Teen Angst, creek is a happy couple fuck you they have no problems, im mean to cartman in this. fuck him, kenny on the other hand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-04 10:55:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15839790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evolsailor/pseuds/evolsailor
Summary: Being in love wasn’t at all what Kenny thought it was. It wasn’t cruel like he’d seen Cartman love, or cheesy as Stan did. It was violent and burning in his chest, blood rushing to his ears, bees fighting in his stomach, his heart reaching up to strangle him.Love felt like dying. Love felt like getting high 3 times over; then crashing, hard and fast. Kenny was always searching for another hit. He didn’t know what counted as a hit.





	1. differences

Kenny wanted Kyle to kill him, and that wasn’t romantic at all.

The older Kenny got, the more Kyle stood out to him. The more he was inclined to count his freckles or watch him closer, only to catch his eye by accident and disappear back to wherever he was hiding. 

Kenny figured out he was in love with Kyle in freshman year. It wasn’t one thing that tipped him off and put butterflies in his stomach. It was small things, like Kyle’s hand gestures, and the way his eyes looked when he got excited, his lunchboxes, the way he dangled his feet over the edge of the school roof.

Being in love wasn’t at all what Kenny thought it was. It wasn’t cruel like he’d seen Cartman love, or cheesy as Stan did. It was violent and burning in his chest, blood rushing to his ears, bees fighting in his stomach, his heart reaching up to strangle him. 

Love felt like dying. Love felt like getting high 3 times over; then crashing, hard and fast. Kenny was always searching for another hit. He didn’t know what counted as a hit.

Kenny looked like a drug addict. He kept his hood up, bit his lips raw, spent his night in that damn house, leaving bruises and blood and bags under his eyes. He wondered what drug they pegged him for. Meth? Or did the Tweaks own that market? (That was mean.) Coke, maybe? Everybody smoked pot, so he doubted that would be anybody’s concern.

 

Kenny wouldn’t do drugs. Not after his parents, no. Even Tweek served as a drug free inspiration for him - kid was fucked up and it wasn’t even his fault. Drugs were what scared Kenny - even if, as an immortal, he should be the prime candidate for body destruction. 

 

Alcohol scared him less, but still enough to stay away from it. After watching it tear Stan down to his worst flaws and fears, he couldn’t do that to himself.

 

High school changed the social geography of the fourth grade class. New schedules and rosters chopped up friends and served them in equal portions. Stan and Kyle got classes together, because of course they would. The perfect friends and their happy ending.

Kenny wasn’t as lucky. Ushered into remedial classes, from there to stupid core classes and silly electives. He did his work. Straight As, purely from dedication, from friendlessness, from lonely nights in his room. 

Okay, that was a lie. Kenny had friends. Friend, singular.  
Tweek Tweak was in Kenny’s biology class in Sophomore year, the rest of the class populated fully by kids that they didn’t know. They slid into a friendship easily. And now, at Junior year, Tweek stood out as Kenny’s only friend. Craig was maybe a friend too, if only by association. Tweek was friends with a few other people, but Kenny didn’t share it. Thankfully, Tweek had lunch with only him.

Somebody slammed a take-out cup in front of him. Speak of the devil.

“What are you looking at?” Tweek hissed, sitting next to Kenny, clutching an identical cup in one hand and a plastic bag in the other.

Kenny didn’t answer, instead inspecting the label on the cup. Harbuck’s, not Tweak’s. No meth here. He glanced to his wild haired friend. 

Tweek tapped the Harbuck’s logo on his own cup. “I’m clean, man.”

“Cool,” Kenny dropped his investigative stance. The only thing Craig and Kenny did together was monitor Tweek’s drug use. They’d been trying to get him to quit cold turkey for a month now. “What kind did you get me?”

Tweek noticeably brightened. Despite his track record with it, he loved his barista job almost as much as acting (Kenny didn’t mind, as long as he didn’t drink his product). “Ack! I got you a eiskafee. It’s a German - gah - coffee with ice cream, milk, and chilled coffee. Taste it.”

Kenny took a sip. “Ice cream melted.”

“It’s sweet coffee and I paid for it for you.”

“I love it.” 

Tweek smiled and nodded, tearing into the bag in his hand. Something warm and breakfast-ey. “I knew you would. Ghk.”

“So...uh, how was Calc?”

He turned his gaze back to Kenny. “Are you really trying to ask me about Kyle?”

“Yeah,” Kenny took a sip of his coffee. “You have Calc with Kyle. Why else would I ask about it?”

“Gh! I don’t know, man! Maybe you care about me and how my classes go.”

“I care about you. Just not how you do in your classes. That’s your business.”

Tweek gave him a hard look. “I don’t - ack - talk to Kyle or anything. He just happens to be in my class. I get you’re,gh,obsessed with him, but you don’t have to hound me about it.”

“Oh, so the one with his boyfriend in his profile picture is going to preach to me?”

Tweek’s face turned bright pink, drawing a chuckle out of Kenny. He was so easily embarrassed, while somehow being the strongest person Kenny knew. 

“AGH! There’s a difference! I’m dating Craig, and you’re just giving Kyle googly eyes across the cafeteria instead of asking him out.” Tweek angrily bit into his muffin. 

“Well, I didn’t really get set up with my dream guy.”

 

“I wasn’t set up. The entire town forced me with him. Were you even there?”

“I was dead that day.”

Tweek thought briefly and nodded. “I guess you were.”

That was where Tweek was different from any friend Kenny had before.

Tweek knew he died.


	2. OGKF

Tweek had considered himself a rational person, all things considered.

Yes, he jumped to conclusions(the smallest things set him off). Yes, he let his paranoia get the best of him sometimes(most times). But if you ignored that, or contributed it to his illnesses or drug use, Tweek was fairly down to earth, in his humble opinion. He tried to think about things(he charged headfirst into fear before danger), he tried to listen to other people’s concerns(screaming matches with the boy he loved), he tried his damn best to be at the very least, an attempt of a normal person.

Tweek stopped trying to be his vision of normal when he saw Kenny die for the first time.

Of course, Tweek had seen Kenny die countless times over, but he wouldn’t remember that until later. Later he’d been shaken with vivid memories of beheadings and bloodshed and brutality. But it was shattered with one death - the day he became Kenny’s friend.

The death that set the ball rolling was on the last day of Sophomore year. It was one of Kenny’s tamer deaths, really - he was hit by a bus, the school bus, right in front of Tweek. It tore him apart under the left wheel, covering Tweek in as much blood as was spilt on the pavement. Tweek had fainted.

The next morning, nobody acknowledged it. Tweek wondered if he had finally done it. Submitted to years of drug use, gone off the deep end, hallucinated his friend’s death. He stayed in his room for the entire first week of summer, reconsidering the circumstances, replaying that day in his head. The memories of other deaths came in nightmares that left him screaming and crying for his mother. From the night with the gnomes, watching Kenny get crushed under a minecart, to a summer afternoon where he decorated the concrete.

Tweek screamed into his pillow until his throat grew raw.

He got a text from Kenny the second Monday of summer. It said one thing.

_**u know, don’t u?** _

Tweek most certainly knew.

  
They became best friends that summer. Kenny explained he’d died a thousand times over, and Tweek showed him the scars that decorated his wrists in a desperate attempt to empathize. Tweek didn’t think it compared, looking back on it. But Kenny held him nonetheless.

They waited to see events unfold, but only Tweek remembered. He watched Kenny tense as he watched Kyle and Stan across the cafeteria every day. They seemed to have forgotten he existed. Tweek decided he hated them.

Tweek tried to indoctrinate Kenny into his own friend group, but Kenny shied from the attention, only paying any mind to Tweek. Clyde and Jimmy assured Tweek they didn’t care. Token said something, too, but Tweek was too busy breaking pencils under the table.

That fiasco had not deterred Tweek in Operation Get Kenny Friends. OGKF was Tweek’s passion project, steering Kenny away from Stan and Kyle, and to some people who didn’t overlook a boy who had been their classmate since Kindergarten.

But of course, Kenny had to fall in love.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all your kind comments! i am so glad you are all enjoying my silly little story ^^
> 
> apologies for this short chapter, i just wanted to get something out for you! the next chapter will be longer, but because i don’t want to rush it, could take a week or more. i apologize wholeheartedly. consider this more of a preface! 
> 
> please be patient with me, and have a lovely day!


	3. strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tweek drags Kenny to a party for interesting results.

“You’re taking me to a party?”

 

“Yes, I am. And what’s so wrong with that?”

 

Kenny had been watching Tweek get ready for fifteen minutes before he finally figured out what was going on. For a guy who looked so unkempt, Tweek sure did take his sweet time pacing around his bedroom for a good outfit. Kenny figured it was for Craig.

 

(Kenny knew it was for Craig.)

 

“I don’t go to parties,” Kenny said, while Tweek pushed his hair back with another brightly colored pin. Kenny wondered if Craig was into the whole manic pixie dream girl look. “Neither do you.”

 

“I go to Clyde’s parties, ngh,” Tweek frowned back at him. “Because I’m his friend.”

 

“I’m not,” He retorted, leaning back against Tweek’s bed frame, hands behind his neck.

 

“Gah! It’s junior year and you need more friends than just me.”

 

“I have more friends.”

 

Tweek gave him another twitchy frown.

  


Kenny knew Tweek disliked Stan and Kyle. Well, more so loathed them. Whenever they were in the same room, he glared holes into the backs of their heads, reminding Kenny it was better on his good side.

  


“I’ll just stay by you the whole time,” Kenny sighed, and Tweek grinned. Kenny always ended up giving into Tweek, even if he didn’t push very hard.

  
  


The party wasn’t much by South Park standards, really. Just a little beer and a lot of hormones. Tweek had his arm wrapped around Kenny’s as they walked across the lawn, Kenny scanning the little pods of teens scattered about. No doubt looking for Stan and Kyle. Tweek bit his tongue.

 

“HEY!”

 

Clyde was leaning his entire upper body over his (newly installed) front porch railing, with Token’s arms wrapped around his midsection to keep him steady. He grinned at them, waving his arms. “You brought Kenny!”

 

“Glad to see you too,ngh,” Tweek gave him a scowl, but laughed when Clyde flipped them off. “Where’s Craig?”

 

“T-taking a l-l-leak,” Jimmy gave the pair a polite wave. He and the aforementioned Token and Clyde were sitting at a plastic table covered in half-drunk red solo cups and beer bottles. Token was dragging Clyde back into his seat.

 

“Kenny’s here!” Clyde grabbed his wrist and held it up as if he were a referee declaring a winner. “We wore him down!”

 

“How drunk are you?” Kenny took his wrist back, smiling.

 

“Not even buzzed, dude,” Clyde leaned back in his chair,looking smug. “This is all natural Donovan charm.”

 

“There’s p-puke u-u-under your c-ch-chair.”

 

Clyde shrieked and stood up like he’d been burned, then glared at Jimmy. Tweek hid his laugh behind his hand.

 

“See?” He mumbled to Kenny. “This is fun.”

 

Kenny wasn’t looking at up, so he followed his gaze.

 

Kyle was standing in front of the bonfire in Clyde’s front yard, wearing  knee-length shorts and a tank top. Noticeably, his hat was gone, and his hair was pushed back with a headband not unlike Tweek’s. He was laughing at something a guy next to him was saying.

 

“....Kenny-”

 

“He’s beautiful.”

 

“Kenny. I swear to fucking god.”

 

“Look at him, Tweekers! This is my moment!”

 

“We are relaxing!”

 

“And I’m taking chances!”  


Tweek groaned and rubbed his temples. When he looked up, Kenny was giving him the biggest eyes he’d ever seen.

 

“Gah! I won’t stop you,” He said finally. Kenny grinned.

 

And like that, he was sprinting across the yard, and Tweek was listening to Clyde talk about last year’s party.

  
  


Kenny caught up to Kyle and slammed his hand down on his shoulder. Kyle jumped and turned to him.

 

“Oh, holy shit. Hey, man,” Kyle blinked and at him, his face glowing by the firelight. “I haven’t seen you in _months.”_

 

 _We have a class together_ , Kenny thought, but said nothing. “I know! I’m so lucky that I caught you. Where’s Stan?”

 

“Wandered off to find Wendy. Figures,” Kyle shrugged. “Can’t get over her being with Bebe now.”

 

“Poor bastard. Remember all the times they broke up?”

 

“Yeah. Always thought they’d work it out.”

 

“Should’ve known he’d turn her gay.”

 

Kyle started laughing, his shoulders rising and falling, his eyes closed. His eyelashes were outlined in the light, and they touched the tops of his cheeks.  


This, above all, was what Kenny wanted. Talking to Kyle like they used to. Watching him laugh, watching him smile - this was the dream.

  


A hooting laughter startled Kenny out of his trance.

 

When he looked to the commotion, he was Stan first, then two guys who were both the size of a mountain. The two massive men towered over a stumbling Stan, who was clearly drunk and very clearly not making these guys too happy with him.

 

“Oh, no,” Kyle sighed. He ran forward, and Kenny followed.

 

“Listen, fellas,” Stan was slurring, pointing a finger at one of them. “I’m not sayin you’re pussies, just sayin that the football team are. Chill.”

 

“We’re _on_ the football team, jackass!” One of the men shouted, sandy haired and green eyed. Kenny recognized now it was actually just a senior - the quarterback of the South Park Cows.

 

“Oh?” Stan blinked. “Guess you're pussies.”

 

Before they could react, the senior was lifting a raised fist. Kyle shouted for them to stop, but also for Stan to run, so it came out as “Stan, stop!”

 

Kenny grabbed the back of the senior's arm.

 

And flipped him behind him.

 

Silence. Kenny spun around to see the senior on the ground, staring at him - not terribly hurt but bewildered. His friend had bolted.

 

“Dude!” Stan clapped him on the back. “How did you do that?”

 

Kenny kept his eyes on the senior.

 

“I don't know.”

  
  


Kenny and Kyle apologized to the senior, a relatively nice guy named Carter. Carter apologized for losing his temper on Stan and told Kenny he was pretty impressive.

 

Kenny was still trying to figure out what he had done.

 

He helped Kyle load a drunk Stan into the car, then the two stood by the driver's door.

 

“It was nice seeing you.”

 

“You too.” Kyle had been giving Kenny the same dumbfounded look since the incident of that night, or The Flip, as the quickly spreading rumor was calling it. “Kenny….can I ask you something?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“....Do you still train as Mysterion? Is that how you flipped that dude?”

 

Kenny thought about it. He hadn't dressed as Mysterion for years, and wasn't in the best shape. He meant to pull the guy back, not flip him. He’d never experienced strength like that. He didn't know where it had come from.

 

But he didn't know how to tell Kyle that the cool thing that he had done was a fluke, a random event - partially because it might not be. Partially because he was worried what that strength may be.

 

“Yeah,” Kenny lied. It was simpler than the truth. “I can't refuse the call of heroism.”

 

It sounded like bullshit to Kenny, but Kyle's eyes widened.

 

“KENNETH!”

 

Kenny turned from Kyle. Tweek and Craig were standing at the edge of the lawn, beckoning Kenny over.

 

“I should go to them.” Kenny gave Kyle a strained smile. “Good luck, dude.”

 

He _sprinted_ away. He had been so excited to see Kyle, but now he wanted nothing more than to tell Tweek what was going on.

 

When he got over there, Tweek started checking him over like a concerned mama bird, and Craig snickered at them.

 

Tweek gave him a stern frown. “AGH! I take you to a party and you leave me to get in a fight?!”

 

“It wasn't a _fight._ I just knocked him back.”

 

“Actually you flipped him over your shoulder like a doll,” Craig said. When they stared blankly at him, he said, “That's how Clyde said it.”

 

“You flipped him?”

 

“Okay, listen. I did flip him. But it was an accident.”

 

“How do you flip somebody - gah! - on _accident?!_ ” Tweek's voice had risen full octaves.

 

“I meant to grab him and pull him back, but then suddenly he was behind me. I didn't know my own strength.”

 

“Who has that much strength, gh!”

 

“I don't know!” Kenny rubbed his temples. “I don't know.”

 

Tweek frowned, turning to Craig. “Ngh, what now?”

 

“Forget about it?” Craig suggested.  Tweek glared at him, but Craig just smiled.

 

“No, I….think I know what it is,” Kenny sighed.

 

“What?”

 

“I think my powers are getting worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took so long. writers block is kicking my ass. anyway, hmu at ktwos on tumblr if you wanna talk. currently planning and renaming these chapters so don't be alarmed if they change.


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